Resinated Wine: What Retsina Is and Why It Tastes of Pine

What Is Resinated Wine?

Resinated wine is wine fermented with small pieces of pine resin, which leave a smell of pine sap over the fruit. Greek retsina is the best-known kind: a dry white, sometimes rosé and very rarely red, made with Aleppo pine resin for at least 2,000 years. Made outside Greece and Cyprus, the same style is sold as resinated wine.

The resin goes into the fermenting juice and comes out again before bottling, but the pine smell stays in the wine. The traditional grape is Savatiano, often blended with Rhoditis or Assyrtiko. Modern producers use much less resin than the old turpentine-scented bottles, and the lighter style suits salty, garlicky Greek food.

What Does Retsina Taste Like?

Retsina tastes like a dry, light white with a layer of pine sap on top. Under the resin you will usually find lemon, green apple and a dry-herb edge. The pine is strongest on the first sniff and often softer in the mouth than the smell promises.

Start with the structure. Retsina is dry, meaning there is no sugar you can taste. It is light in body: the weight of the wine, like skimmed versus whole milk.

Its acidity (the tartness that makes your mouth water) runs from gentle to fresh. A blend with Assyrtiko or Rhoditis feels sharper, because both grapes hold on to acid in the heat.

Then the smells. The resin brings pine needles and warm sap, like the air in a pine wood on a hot day, because resin is the sticky sap of the Aleppo pine itself. The fruit is lemon peel and fresh apple, because Savatiano is a mild grape picked for freshness. Some bottles add a dried-thyme edge, which is why retsina sits close to the wines in herbal notes in wine.

A retsina that smells like paint thinner has too much resin, and that is a winemaking choice, as explained in wine fault vs style. A retsina that smells of pine over lemon has the balance modern producers aim for.

Quick check

One question on what you just read

Where does retsina's smell of pine come from?

APine resin added during fermentationBAgeing in barrels made of pineCPine trees that grow by the vines

Tap an answer to see how you did.

Traditional vs Modern Retsina: How Do You Tell Them Apart?

Traditional retsina smells of resin before you lift the glass; modern retsina keeps the pine as a top note over the fruit. The difference comes down to dose. Producers today use much less resin than was traditionally called for, which softens the pungent turpentine whiff that older bottles were known for. The grapes and the method stay the same.

	Traditional retsina	Modern retsina
Resin dose	Heavy	Much lighter
Smell	Pine and turpentine first, fruit hidden	Pine sap over lemon and apple
Grapes	Mostly Savatiano	Savatiano, often with Assyrtiko or Rhoditis for lift
How it is sold	Cheap taverna table wine, often unnamed grapes	Bottles naming a grape or region
Serve it with	Fried fish, garlic dips, grilled meat	Meze, octopus, feta, lemony salads

If the label says only "retsina" and the bottle sits at the very bottom of the price range, expect the traditional, resin-heavy style. If it names a grape such as Savatiano or Assyrtiko, or a place, expect the lighter one. For a first bottle, pick the second kind, and read the Greece wine guide for how the country's modern producers reshaped their reputation.

What Food Goes With Retsina?

Retsina goes best with salty, garlicky, oily Greek food, the kind that flattens a delicate white. Two classic Greek matches are skordalia, a thick garlic dip, and pastirma, a spiced cured beef. Four things on the plate make the pairing work:

• Garlic. Raw garlic overwhelms a subtle white, but retsina's pine is just as loud, so neither one disappears.
• Salt. Olives, feta, cured meat and anchovies make the wine taste fruitier, because salt softens the bitter edge of the resin.
• Oil and frying. Fried squid, courgette fritters and fried fish coat the mouth, and the wine's acidity cuts through that coating.
• Lemon and herbs. Grilled octopus with lemon and oregano repeats the wine's own citrus and dry-herb smells.

If the plate is garlicky, salty or fried, pour retsina. If it is creamy and delicate, like a butter sauce or a mild white fish, pick an unresinated Greek white such as the ones in the Assyrtiko wine guide. Retsina also handles grilled lamb with rosemary, whose resin-like smell sits close to the wine's pine. The wider rules for fish and shellfish are in wine with seafood.

How Should You Serve Retsina?

Serve retsina fridge-cold, in an ordinary white wine glass, and pour small amounts so each glass stays cold. Cold mutes the resin and lifts the lemon. Warm retsina tastes of little but pine, so the bottle belongs in an ice bucket between pours.

If you forgot to chill it, how to chill wine fast has the quickest methods. If the pine feels harsh, chill the wine harder. If it tastes flat and dull, let the glass warm up for a few minutes. The wine serving temperature chart gives the ranges for light whites in general.

Retsina is made to drink young. Buy it to open within the year, and finish an opened bottle within a couple of days.

What Grapes Are Used to Make Retsina?

Savatiano, one of Greece's most widely planted grapes, is the classic retsina grape, often blended with Rhoditis or Assyrtiko for extra freshness. Savatiano grows mostly in central Greece, especially in Attica near Athens and on the island of Euboea, which is why Attica, Boeotia and Euboea are the main centres of retsina production.

Savatiano earned its place because it resists drought. Its weakness is low natural acidity, so winemakers often blend in other grapes:

• Savatiano gives the mild lemon-and-apple base and most of the volume.
• Rhoditis is a pink-skinned, late-ripening grape from the Peloponnese that keeps its acidity in hot climates. Today it is most often blended with Savatiano for retsina.
• Assyrtiko adds sharp acidity and a salty, lemony bite, the same grape behind the whites in the Santorini wine guide.
• Athiri is the main retsina grape on the island of Rhodes.

Savatiano without resin exists too: in the Attica village of Kantza, producers make it as a single-variety wine with no pine at all.

How Is Retsina Made?

Retsina is made like any light white wine, plus one resination step. Small pieces of Aleppo pine resin go into the must (the crushed grape juice before it becomes wine) as it ferments, and release their pine flavour. After fermentation, the winemaker racks the wine and removes the resin and the oily film it leaves on the surface.

Racking means moving the wine off the solids that settle in the tank, into a clean tank. For retsina, that step also takes out the resin pieces, though their pine smell stays. The rest is ordinary white winemaking: pressing, fermentation, clarifying and bottling young.

The resin comes from the Aleppo pine, a tree native to the Mediterranean from Morocco to Greece. It grows mostly at low altitude, from sea level to about 200 metres, so it has always been close to Greek coastal vineyards.

Why Does Retsina Taste of Pine? The Amphora Story

Retsina tastes of pine because ancient Greeks sealed their wine jars with pine resin, and the flavour outlived the jars. An amphora was a clay jar with two handles, the standard way to store and ship wine before barrels. Resin sealed the jar and its stopper against air, and some of the pine seeped into the wine.

Roman writers show the flavour was already a choice as well as a side effect. In the first century AD, Columella described in De Re Rustica different resins for sealing a container and for mixing into the wine. Pliny the Elder recommended adding resin to fermenting must, and wrote that resin from the mountains smelled better than resin from the lowlands.

By the third century AD, barrel making had spread across the Roman Empire, so the practical need for resin disappeared. The taste stayed in the eastern empire, Byzantium, and visitors noticed. In 968 the envoy Liutprand of Cremona called the wine of Constantinople "undrinkable", and in 1494 the traveller Pietro Casola complained of the "unpleasant odour" of resinated wine in the Peloponnese.

Did Greeks Resin Their Wine to Spite the Romans?

No record proves it. The popular story says Greeks added resin to spoil their wine for Roman plunderers, yet the ancient writers who discuss resin, from Columella to Pliny, describe it only as a sealant and a flavouring. If a back label tells the Roman version, read it as folklore and judge the wine by its grape and resin level.

Resinated Wine vs Retsina: Who Can Use Which Name?

Resinated wine is the technique; retsina is a protected name for it. The European Union reserves "retsina" for Greece and parts of southern Cyprus, so a resin-flavoured wine made anywhere else needs another name. A South Australian version, for example, can be called resinated wine but not retsina.

Label word	What it means	Where you see it
Resinated wine	Any wine fermented with pine resin	Wines from outside Greece and Cyprus, such as South Australia
Retsina	Resinated wine from a protected place	Greece and parts of southern Cyprus
A Greek grape name with no "retsina"	A white made without resin	Greek shelves, often beside the retsina

If the main name on the label is resinated wine rather than retsina, the bottle usually comes from outside Greece and Cyprus. A name tied to a place like this is a kind of appellation, explained in what is an appellation.

Inside Greece, wine law has three main tiers: PDO wines, PGI wines, and epitrapezios oinos, or table wine. Retsina is listed apart as a traditional designation for wine flavoured with pine resin, historically grouped with table wine. How to read a wine label covers the other words you may see around it.

Is Retsina the Same as Orange Wine?

No. Orange wine gets its amber colour and grip from skin contact, meaning the white grape skins stay in the juice for days or months. Retsina is usually a pale white made without long skin contact, and its signature comes from resin added during fermentation.

Skin contact adds tannin, the drying grip you feel on your gums. Resin adds a pine smell but no tannin. The orange wine explained guide covers skin contact in depth, and the wine styles hub maps both families.

How to Taste Retsina Tonight

Buy one retsina that names its grape and one unresinated Greek white, such as a Savatiano or an Assyrtiko, and chill both. Pour them side by side. The difference between the glasses is the resin and nothing else.

Smell the unresinated glass first, then the retsina, and name what the pine covers up: the lemon, the apple, or both. Then take a salty bite and sip the retsina again. The Sommy app at sommy.wine guides you through each glass and keeps the notes. Open the two bottles tonight with whatever salty snack is in the fridge.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Retsina (resinated wine, history, EU name protection, Australia, food)
2. Wine Folly: Savatiano (Greece's most planted variety)
3. Wikipedia: Savatiano (the classic retsina grape)
4. Wikipedia: Rhoditis (most often blended with Savatiano for retsina)
5. Wikipedia: Aleppo pine (the resin used in retsina)
6. Wikipedia: Greek wine (classification tiers)